Showing off your work.

Any senior who is completing a capstone, research, thesis, or fine arts creative project this academic year is invited to prepare a poster and accompanying abstract that will be posted the Northland College website on the day of this event. Students must also be available to engage with those who view this work, through a virtual Teams meeting room between 5:30–7:30 pm on the evening of April 8. Students who are not seniors but are collaborating on research or capstone projects, juniors who are completing a capstone or capstone course, and those who had planned to present their work during 2020’s cancelled event are also welcome to participate.

The goals of the symposium are to celebrate student research and capstone projects and provide students with an opportunity to professionally develop and virtually present an abstract and poster.

Registration deadline:

To register, send the working title of your poster, the name of your faculty supervisor, and the academic program your research aligns with (e.g. history, environmental geosciences, sociology & social justice) to internships@northland.edu by Thursday, March 11, 2021.

Materials deadline:

Students must email all required documents and resources listed below to internships@northland.edu by Thursday, March 25, 2021 to be included in the event. Materials should have already been reviewed by your faculty supervisor by this date.

If your faculty or project supervisor is unable to review and edit, the library director is available to assist. Email libary@northland.edu to schedule a meeting.

Documents and resources to be sent to internships@northland.edu are:

• JPEG image of your poster
• Posters will not be printed this year due to the format being virtual.
• Microsoft Word Document of your written abstract that concisely summarizes your research work. (200 – 250 words in length)
• URL link for your Microsoft Teams virtual meeting room, scheduled for April 8, 2021 between 5:30–7:30 pm. The meeting name should be the same as your poster title.

Poster pre-view session:

7:30 am, Thursday, April 8, 2021

Poster images and accompanying abstracts will be viewable on this page.

Each project will be listed by title with presenter names, under their respective departmental program heading. The project  will also include a link to a Microsoft Teams virtual meeting room, to be accessed between 5:30-7:30 pm that evening.

Student virtual presentations:

5:30-7:30 pm, Thursday, April 8, 2021

Student researchers will be available via the Microsoft Teams meeting room links listed on this page, to answer questions and discuss their research.

Meeting room links will be removed at the close of the event; 7:30 pm, but titles, poster images and abstracts will remain up on the website.

Most participants use PowerPoint to design a poster, but students can use any platform, as long as the end product meets the following requirements:

Finished file format:

• JPEG
• Posters should be developed in a horizontal layout. A typical dimension for a horizontal PowerPoint poster is 48 inches wide by 36 inches tall. Keep in mind, you will not be printing these posters. They will only be viewed virtually. Please connect with your faculty supervisor for more specific feedback and expectations regarding the content you should include on your poster.

Setting poster size if using PowerPoint:

• Click the DESIGN tab on the top of the PowerPoint screen. Click on SLIDE SIZE located near the right end of the ribbon.
• Click Custom Slide Size. In the new window, under “Slides sized for,” select CUSTOM (bottom of the list).
• Enter your poster width (48 inch) and height (36 inch).
• On the right side of that same window, check that the orientation for your slide is LANDSCAPE for a horizontal poster. Click OK.
• In the new window that pops up, click on Ensure Fit.
• When done creating the poster, save it as a JPEG.

This video of How to make an academic poster in PowerPoint may be helpful. Keep in mind, you will need to save your version as a JPEG (rather than a PDF as she suggests).

This is how your poster will be viewed. Double click the image to expand the view.

Abstracts should be between 200-250 words. They should be saved as a separate Microsoft Word document, and are not included on the poster. Your faculty supervisor or research/project supervisor must review your abstract before you submit it on the Thursday, March 11 deadline.

Although abstracts vary somewhat by discipline, all abstracts are a succinct summary of a completed work or work in progress. An abstract condenses a larger piece of writing (a thesis, research project, performance, etc.), highlighting its major points and concisely describing the content and scope of the project. For purposes of the poster session, you will need to produce an informative abstract. Your abstract should include the following elements:

• Rationale

  Why should the reader care about the problem/issue you’ve chosen to explore? This section should focus on the importance of your work and the potential impact it might have if successful.

• Problem statement/purpose

  What problem are you trying to solve? What issue did you set out to explore? What do you hope to learn from it?

• Methodology

  How did you go about solving or making progress on the problem? What method did you use to explore you problem (sampling, experimentation, trial and error)? If you did not do a research project, make note here of any theoretical framework or methodological assumptions that underlie what you did.  If in the arts, this section should outline the media and process you used to develop your project.

• Results/findings

  What did you discover/uncover during your research? Your explanation of the significance of your results (completed, unexpected, negative, and partial) is more important than the results themselves. If your research is not completed, this section should list the expected results or outcomes.

• Conclusions/implications

  What are the implications of your findings? How does your work contribute to your field of study?  Are there implications for future work in this area?

Review your work:

• Is it complete—covering all the major parts of the project?
• Is it cohesive—flowing smoothly from start to finish?
• Is it concise—containing no unnecessary words or information?
• Is it clear—remaining readable for all your audiences, even in its abbreviated form?
• Is it correct—grammatically? Visually?
• Have your faculty advisor review your abstract and submit it as a Microsoft Word document to the Student Career Advisor via  email .

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SMALL MAMMAL SPECIES DIVERSITY AND WOODLAND JUMPING MICE

Allison M. DeRose, Emily K. Heald, and Dr. Paula S. Anich

Northland College

April 4, 2013

Abstract:  The Woodland Jumping Mouse (Napaeozapus insignis) is an old-growth boreal rodent species.  Woodland Jumping Mice play an important role in forest ecosystems because they disperse the spores of fungi that are only found on coniferous tree species.  The distribution of this species in Wisconsin and its interactions with other small mammal species are not well understood.  Prior to 2011, the Woodland Jumping Mouse was represented statewide only by 48 museum specimens.  Due to its perceived rarity, the Woodland Jumping Mouse has been listed as a Species of Greatest Conservation Need by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. This study analyzes the influence of other small mammal species on the presence of Woodland Jumping Mice.  Over a period of 3 months in the summer of 2012, (6,600 trap-nights) we set Sherman-live traps in 14 different sites in Ashland, Bayfield, Price, and Sawyer counties within the Chequamegon National Forest.  We targeted late-succession spruce-fir and hemlock sites in order to locate populations of Woodland Jumping Mice.  We captured 7 definitive Woodland Jumping Mice, one of which was a recapture.  In addition to the target species, we captured 593 animals of 10 species.  We sexed and measured standard morphometrics (mass, total body length, ear length, tail length, hind foot length) for each animal trapped.  We looked for statistically significant relationships between the presence of Woodland Jumping Mice and small mammal species diversity using the program R.  We discovered that Woodland Jumping Mice are associated with sites that have high small mammalian species diversity.  This relationship suggests that the presence of Woodland Jumping Mice at a particular site is an indication of pristine, unfragmented wildlife habitat.

Additional resources to help you write an abstract are available at Dexter Library.

LB 2369 .R87 2006

How to write a successful science thesis: the concise guide for students /  by William E. Russey, Hans F. Ebel, Claus Bliefert.

Q 180.55 .M4 B66 1995

The craft of research / by Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams.